


Out of Storms Comes Strength for Tomorrow

by brynnmclean (ilfirin_estel)



Series: out of storms 'verse [1]
Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works, The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Gen, Grief, Post-Battle of Five Armies, Queerplatonic Relationships, Spoilers for Battle of Five Armies, Tauriel-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-03
Updated: 2015-03-03
Packaged: 2018-03-16 02:23:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3470861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilfirin_estel/pseuds/brynnmclean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Tauriel did not fade, though her grief often felt like a shadow threatening to swallow her whole.</i>
</p><p>After the Battle, Tauriel decides to leave Mirkwood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Out of Storms Comes Strength for Tomorrow

**Author's Note:**

> Some initial things: I’ve been operating from my position of “canon? what canon? /throws canon out the window” with this fic, so I took things that I liked from the films, threw out things I didn’t like, messed with the film timeline and Tauriel’s age, created some backstory stuff for her parents, etc. Basically, I wasn’t married to film!canon or book!canon, and I’ve tried to do something of a blend between the two while adding my own personal headcanons to the mix. I hope I’ve managed to make it all make sense.
> 
> This will (hopefully!) be a part of a larger ‘verse. The title is from [Wonder](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-1FhQkKiJ8) from the LotR Musical.
> 
> I owe my eternal love and gratitude to my dearest friends [Shay](http://cosmicwarden.tumblr.com) and [Monica](http://dwarveslikeshinythings.tumblr.com) for reading this fic piece by piece as I wrote it— and to my own sworn brother, [Lauren](http://ohhotgraham.tumblr.com), for motivating me to finish so that she could beta two drafts of it.
> 
> I’ve been crying about this fic on tumblr under this [tag](http://brynnmclean.tumblr.com/tagged/the-tauriel-fic). And for the record, the working title of this fic in Google Docs was originally “this fic might end up being NOTHING BUT PAIN”.
> 
> See the end notes for language translations. I will figure out how to do hover texts (????) soon.
> 
> Enjoy! <3

Tauriel could have laid there on the jagged rocks and let the snow cover her, let the ice crack through her broken heart. She could have clung to the lifeless shell that once housed Kíli’s fëa, (what did dwarves call their spirits, she wondered, and could she follow his to Aulë’s Halls?), refused to let go, even if all the ravens of Erebor came to pick their bones clean.

The stars would come out, but she would not see them. She would walk through her memories—all she had left of him, save the rune stone he had folded into her palm, _keep it as a promise_ —and she would fade slowly, terribly from the earth.

No. She could have, but she did not.

His friends came for him and his brother and their king. They looked upon her with kindness—kindness that disarmed her, _shamed_ her. Who was she to them, besides the strange elf who wept for their beloved prince? Near enough to a stranger. Yet, the sorrow etched upon the faces of Thorin’s Company held no scorn when they beheld her.

She let them take his body from her arms, his blood still wet and warm on her hands.

“I’m sorry,” she gasped, curling in on herself to keep from reaching out for him because she had no right, these were his friends come to take his body home—though she—she had—

“I loved him,” she said, her voice a shattered thing in her throat, unrecognizable. “I loved him,” she said, but the words were buried beneath the lament the dwarves of Erebor sang as they carried the sons of Durin back to the mountain. Their voices were heavy and deep, a rumbling avalanche of grief that she thought she understood even though she could not speak the tongue.

He had called her something in that language— _amrâlimê,_ she could still hear him, such joy in the word—and she could still see the way he’d smiled and insisted she knew what it meant, and oh, how painful that was, the slide of a knife between her ribs that she wasn’t sure she should flinch away from or rise to meet.

The dwarves were singing and she wanted to follow them, but she could not, buried beneath the weight of loss. Kíli would be buried beneath stone, the bright light of him covered in cold earth, and even if she faded, even if she left this world and slammed her fists against the doors to the halls of Aulë, who was to say that he would hear? That she would be let in?

“Tauriel,” she heard Legolas speaking to her in the waking world, felt his hands upon her own, thumbs pressed into her palms against flaking blood. Dried. How long had she been lying there, time slipping through her fingers. She shuddered, tears like frost upon her cheeks.

Legolas was gentle as he touched her face, her shoulder—dislocated, but the pain felt so distant, insignificant. “Gwanunig nîn,” he called her, like he had since they were small, and it made her _feel_ small—memories of pressing her face to his chest and weeping over skinned knees, but this was far, far worse, something that a bandage and a small span of time could not heal.

He was speaking to her in a soft, hushed voice, telling her the injuries she had sustained beyond her shoulder—a broken leg, a cut on her forehead that still bled sluggishly… It hurt to breathe, but she was unsure if that was the storm of grief in her chest or a cracked rib, and it didn’t matter, none of that mattered—“ _Kíli,_ ” was all she managed to say, but Legolas closed his eyes and pulled her to him, tucking her head beneath his chin.

“I am sorry, gwanunig.” Legolas’s hands were in her hair and she let him hold her. “I am sorry. I know you loved him.”

 _It was a dream,_ she thought, the dwarven lament ringing in her ears, overlapping with the voice of a ghost. _Just a beautiful, cruel dream._

-

Tauriel did not fade.

Her wounds healed, her bones mended, her strength returned. The trees of Mirkwood lost their leaves, their branches stretched barren toward the stars. Tauriel’s heart continued to beat, but it was a jagged shard of ice in the cage of her ribs, a winter she could not shake.

But she did not fade, though her grief often felt like a shadow threatening to swallow her whole.

A raven came from Erebor, bearing a message from the new King under the Mountain, Dáin Ironfoot. It was addressed to King Thranduil, but there was a note in it from the members of Thorin’s Company inquiring about Tauriel’s health and informing her of when the funeral for Thorin Oakenshield and his nephews would be, should she wish to attend.

She rolled Kíli’s runestone between her palms as Legolas read the message to her, the dark stone warm in her hands. When he finished, she wordlessly motioned for him to join her in sitting on her bed, their backs against her headboard. He hooked his ankle over hers, and she knew with that gesture that he would stay with her until she had an answer to the letter, no matter how long that took.

A funeral. It was strange to think of it. Among elves, funerals were rare and farewells were never permanent. Death was not _final._

“This is final,” she murmured, worrying at the runes in the black stone with her thumb. “This is saying goodbye.”

Legolas pressed the back of his hand against hers. She entwined their fingers together, Kíli’s runestone between their clasped hands. _I am sorry, gwanunig,_ she heard again, Legolas’s words echoing in his touch, though he hadn’t repeated the sentiment aloud since he had held her on the battlefield.

“Do you want to say goodbye?” Legolas asked, and that was it, the real question.

“No,” she admitted, her heart in her throat. “I don’t know if I can. I don’t want to believe that I won’t see him again. I never before thought Ilúvatar cruel to sunder our fates from those of mortals—I don’t _want_ to believe that.” She squeezed Legolas’s hand and felt the imprint of the runes on her skin. “I want to believe that when he gave me this stone, it was a promise that we will see each other again, even beyond death. That it is possible.”

Her voice broke. She pressed her face into Legolas’s shoulder and closed her burning eyes. 

Tauriel thought of her mother then. When she had been small, Bronwe had warned her against loving mortals. _Their paths are severed from ours. The light in them is too bright to linger in this world—a flame that will flare and die in an instant, abandoning you to the cold, the dark._

Bronwe had sailed with Legolas’s mother after both had received dire wounds that only Valinor could heal. Tauriel had not yet lived a century, too young to have thought to ask what mortals her mother had loved and lost, where they had lived, and what had taken them. When they met again in the Undying Lands, Tauriel would ask for that story. For now she only had the memory of that warning: _do not love them, henig, protect yourself from that pain._

Tauriel had not met any mortals then. She had not known how captivating the bright flame of them would be—Bronwe had not warned her of that. But nothing would have stopped Tauriel from wanting to dance in Kíli’s light. Even if only for the instant he had been in her life, so short and so sweet, burning her irreparably.

If she could see him again, if she could be with him, he would melt away her grief like the first dawn of spring upon snow. Oh, she did not want to believe he was lost to her until the ending of the world. She could not believe that. Death could not be so final.

Legolas broke through her thoughts, his words quiet and measured, and always, always true. “When we are in Valinor, you and I,” he said, pressing a brief kiss to her hair. “We will argue with Mandos and Aulë Themselves, and we will sit outside the gates to the Dwarven halls, wherever they may be, for as long as it takes to be let in.”

“Promise me,” Tauriel said, the words barely more than a breath.

“I promise, gwanunig,” Legolas replied, and she smiled for the first time in a month.

-

Tauriel did attend the funeral, after all. She dressed in her finest clothes and had Legolas braid flowers into her hair like little white stars. In the mausoleum deep in heart of the Lonely Mountain, she stood beside her prince and her king, and held Legolas’s hand with a grip so tight her fingers ached.

It was a startlingly small ceremony. So she thought, at least, until it was made clear that this was actually the second of two funerals, the first having occurred soon after the battle and being one only dwarves were allowed to attend.

She did not watch Kíli’s body be lowered into the earth. He was already lost to her beneath a sarcophagus of black marble, guarded by his own likeness.

Truth be told, the statue broke her heart the most. The sculptor had clearly been at the Battle and had seen Thorin flanked by his sister-sons, all three of them fearsome to behold as they each fought to their last breaths. She had seen them herself, seen Kíli with teeth bared, sword drawn and black with orc’s blood, bow shattered at his feet. This monument to him as a warrior—she shivered to see it now, her chest tightening. This was not how she wanted to remember him. Not in that terrible moment of his death.

His eyes had found hers just before the orc’s cruel blade pierced his heart. She had watched the bright light of him flicker out, his mouth shaping that strange, dwarvish word— _amrâlimê._

She closed her eyes against it, but she could not forget.

All the words of the proceedings rushed past her like loud, unintelligible river rapids, though they were in Westron and the crowd was a silent, pensive few. She grasped none of it and was startled when Legolas spoke to her, still in the Common Tongue, asking if she’d like to come with him while he approached the tombs.

She couldn’t find words in any tongue in that moment.

As if from a great distance, she watched Thranduil place Orcrist upon the tomb of Thorin Oakenshield, watched other mourners lay their hands upon the statues of the late King and his nephews, quietly speaking to ghosts. Bard of Esgaroth, too, paid his respects to each son of Durin, his children trailing behind him, their eyes red-rimmed. She recognized the dwarf Bofur standing beside the halfling, Bilbo Baggins, his hand upon Bilbo’s trembling shoulder. Bilbo clutched the foot of Thorin’s statue, his head bowed, free hand pressed against his eyes.

All these people surrounding her, their grief laid open and raw for all to see and share in, and she stood among them with the memories of Kíli’s death rushing in on all sides, threatening her delicate grip on the present. Legolas was a steady, patient presence at her side, but not even he was a comfort to her. The ice of the Battle was in her chest, the mountain’s weight crushing down upon her. Her hands felt slick, Kíli’s blood on her skin, the metal scent of it mixed with smoke and snow. She had to hold herself together, she _had_ to.

But to go to his grave, to touch the stone that covered his body—

“No,” she said, the word jagged, tearing out of her throat. She swallowed, taking a shuddering breath. “I cannot—I cannot go to him. I cannot say goodbye. He is not _here._ ”

 _He is not here,_ she repeated to herself, clinging to the truth of it with a desperation that was so forceful it felt feral. _He is not here. I cannot say goodbye to someone who is not here._

Legolas pressed his lips to her temple, the soft lilt of Silvan soothing her, “As you will, sister. Stay here, I will be but a moment.”

But as soon as her twin left her side, someone else took his place. It was a dwarf she recognized when she turned to look, but she could not name him. His hair was a shock of white— _old age,_ she thought and that was so foreign that it was jarring. His eyes, though they shone with tears, were kind.

“It is good that you came, my lady,” he said and sketched a short bow, taking her hand between both of his. His hands were weathered, but strong. “I am Balin son of Fundin, at your service.”

“I am Tauriel,” she said, back stiff and straight, but she was cracking, the hairline fractures in her composure growing deeper the longer she stood futile against her sorrow. “I thank you for allowing me to attend.”

Balin’s brow furrowed just a little. “You have a right to be here, Lady Tauriel.” She wanted to jerk away from him because she was trembling and she knew he could feel it. She wanted to run, to stop him from speaking, though his voice held compassion when he said, “Kíli loved you. All of the Company knows that you were his One.” 

At last, the dam broke and the river overtook her. She covered her mouth with her free hand to muffle her weeping, stuttering apologies and hunching her shoulders, but she felt stunned gazes of other mourners upon her. Tears spilling down her cheeks, she thought of Kíli telling her starlight was cold and remote, and she had known even then that his people thought that true also of elves.

She was not sure if she wished herself cold and remote in this moment, but she _was_ sure that she desired to fold in on herself and sink into the floor. Balin hid any shock he may have felt at her reaction and gently guided her over to a bench away from prying eyes.

“There now, lass,” he murmured, fishing a handkerchief from his pockets and offering it to her. “There now.”

 _What right have I to grieve him,_ she thought, miserable, shame bitter on her tongue, like it had been in the aftermath of the Battle. _What right have I to grieve him while here in the company of his kith and kin?_ “Goheno nin,” she choked out, not realizing that she’d spoken Sindarin until she saw Balin’s deepened frown. “Forgive me, please, I’m sorry—” Helpless, she buried her face in her hands, shoulders shaking uncontrollably.

“What for?” Balin asked. The hand he grasped her shoulder with was warm. Steadying. “For grieving the dead, as all here do? That is not a thing to be sorry for, Lady Tauriel.” 

She wiped her burning eyes and dared to look at him, but she could not hold his gaze for more than a moment.

“We heard you,” he said, so gentle it hurt to hear. “What you said when we came to take Kíli’s body home. We know that you loved him.”

“I did. I _do,_ ” she managed, and though this dwarf, Balin, was clearly telling her she need not defend herself, that she did indeed have a right to mourn his prince, she still tried. And the words flowed out of her like water. “Our memories are different than mortals’. Time will not soften this. I walk with Kíli in dreams and I will not forget even a second of our time together.” Both a blessing and a curse.

He studied her and the pause that came between them felt weighted, as if he chose his words with great care. “You and Kíli met at a tumultuous time. I hope that you will focus on the good that you shared, rather than the hardships.”

Her gaze fell upon the statue of Kíli, his fierce likeness. _I will not remember him that way,_ she thought. _It is too close to death._ “I will remember his smile, how it lit his face like sunlight,” she said aloud. “I will remember the fire moon over Dunland, and I will remember—” Her throat closed up around the word. She swallowed hard, steeling herself. “He said _amrâlimê_ to me.”

She turned to look at Balin and saw that his eyes were closed, his head tipped downward. “Ahh, laddie,” he murmured. “He was a brave one. That he was.”

Tauriel knew that if she did not ask now, she never would. Summoning her courage, she faced Balin in full. “What does it mean?”

 _You know what it means,_ she heard Kíli say in her mind, but she wanted the certainty of an answer.

The smile Balin gave her was a small, mirthless upturn of the mouth. “It means ‘my love’.”

Of course it did. Of course.

Tauriel turned to the grave that held Kíli’s body, and her eyes filled with a fresh wave of tears. “Meleth nîn,” she called to his ghost, wishing she could be certain that far, far away from her in death he could still hear.

-

When they returned from Erebor, Tauriel’s days were spent almost mindlessly. There was work to be done, of course, clearing spider nests and the destruction left by the Shadow. There were rumors that the darkness had been banished from Dol Guldur and that the sickness in the forest would at last dissipate, but Tauriel’s heart felt heavy with foreboding. She did not trust to hope.

Though she had been pardoned by the King for abandoning her post and returned to the Guard as a captain, her position felt as precarious as storm-ravaged branches threatening to snap beneath her feet. Her company took her back without so much as a blink from any of them, but the whispers and narrowed gazes of other elves were not unknown to her.

It was not her past actions that they spoke of. To her own people, her behavior after the burning of Esgaroth was clean. She had been given the choice then between returning with Legolas and being pardoned or leaving Mirkwood forever in disgrace and exile, and she had chosen to come home. And against her better judgment, she had armed herself and marched with Legolas to Dale and the gates of Erebor.

Though the battle had ultimately been fought against orcs, the memories of that march still left a bitter taste in her mouth. _There is no honor in this fight,_ she remembered thinking as she stood on the crumbling walls of Dale, seeing two whole armies amassed against thirteen dwarves and one halfling.

But nothing of that had her people speaking in undertones and whispering behind their hands in her presence, she knew. What gossip she caught was about her and the strange love she held for mortals, told in tones drowned in confusion and pity.

She tried to ignore it all—the words, the stares—tried to concentrate solely on her patrols, but when the work grew to be less consuming, when the forest resembled Greenwood again, her shields became battered and thin. And it was harder to hide how her feet led her inexorably to places Kíli had been.

She walked with him in dreams, as she had told Balin she would, re-living the memories every time she let sleep cloud her vision. When she was left to her own thoughts in the waking world, Kíli came again still to haunt her. Sometimes it felt as if she could will him back into this world just by sheer force of desire, just to see him one more time, to hear him laugh, to have him tell her one more story about parts of the world she had never seen.

She had seen so little of this world she felt so strongly about protecting.

 _Perhaps,_ she thought each night she returned to her quarters, _perhaps I should travel._ The idea sparked hot within her, a flame leaping against the cold stone of her heart. 

-

After Tauriel requested an audience with the King, she spent a few frantic hours coming up with nearly hundreds of plans on what she was going to say to him. Of course as soon as she stood in front of the doors to Thranduil’s quarters, all those carefully crafted words disappeared from her head.

The message that the King had wished to speak to her in his personal chambers rather than in the throne room had shaken what little confidence she had summoned. It wasn’t that she’d never had a private discussion with Thranduil—she had—it was more of the undeniable fact that since they had returned from the Battle, she had been doing all that she could to avoid speaking with him. The formality the throne room inherently imparted upon a meeting was something she wanted to cling to as a shield, a buffer.

There would be nothing and no one else now, no guards, no interruptions, just her and her king and everything she needed to say to him. And everything he would say to her. He could cut her to the bone.

Nausea was a rare feeling among elves because they did not become ill like mortals. Tauriel had retched only a handful of times in centuries of life, but as she wavered before Thranduil’s doors, her stomach clenched in an uncomfortable way she recognized. She took a slow, deep breath and knocked sharply, trying not to think.

“Enter,” her king intoned, his voice betraying nothing of how he felt. His face, when she opened the door and he looked up from the paperwork on his desk, was a mask she did not know how to read.

She fell back against proper decorum like a crutch, pressing a clenched fist over her heart and bowing low, a soldier’s salute. She kept her gaze pinned to the stone floor. “Hîr nîn,” she said in greeting, and her voice trembled a little in spite of herself.

“Captain,” Thranduil acknowledged before studying her for a tense moment that stretched for an Age. “Sit down,” he finally said, and Tauriel obeyed without a word and without meeting his eyes. 

Panic simmered low in her gut as she searched her mind for something to say and found nothing.

She scanned the objects on his desk, spotting the elk figurine Legolas had carved him as a child, its antlers being the only thing differentiating it from a strange dog. Beside it was a carving she herself had made around the same time: a clumsily rendered star. She had given it to Thranduil not long after her mother and Queen Nindaras had sailed, a shy offering of comfort amidst mutual sorrow. The sight startled her, her breath catching in her throat. She had not known that he had kept it all these years, right there on his desk next to a gift his own son had made.

It wasn’t courage that made her meet his gaze then; it was something else, something that made her heart ache beneath her ribs. 

Thranduil’s face softened. “When I received your request, I thought it would be better if we spoke here than in the Halls. Here, we may speak more freely to one another.”

She had been afraid of residual anger, had steeled herself for a rebuke from him, but the gentleness in his voice helped her settle enough to find her voice. “Thank you, my lord.”

He inclined his head, the barest trace of a smile curving across his lips. “I know why you wish to speak to me, Tauriel. In truth, I have waited for this day for a long time.”

“How can that be when I have only arrived at this conclusion recently?” she blurted out then shook her head, trying to recover. “My lord, I wish to take an indefinite leave of absence from my duties as a captain of the Guard. I wish to—” Her voice broke, but she pushed through. “I wish to leave your kingdom, my lord, with your blessing.”

“You have it.”

The simplicity of those words shocked her. Thranduil looked at her and she had no idea how to read his eyes—there was no coldness, no anger, no grief, only gentle acceptance. For a terrible moment, she thought she might cry.

“You are truly not surprised.” Her words were strained, her heart caught painfully in her throat.

“No.” Thranduil’s smile grew more apparent, but a wistful sort of sadness dimmed its light. “She may have sailed when you were young, but you are nothing if not Bronwe’s daughter.”

Her mother… It had been a long time since she’d heard anyone speak of her. _Time will not soften this,_ she remembered telling the dwarf Balin about elvish memory, and there it was, the sharp bewildering pain of her youth dragging a sob from the ache in her chest. Tears spilling down her cheeks as she clung to Legolas’s hand, the two of them straining to see the last figures in the convoy even after the forest had swallowed them— _no,_ she shook that memory away before it overwhelmed her.

Her mother. Tauriel had been young, but she remembered the stories other people had told about how fierce a warrior Bronwe had been. Tauriel’s beloved knives had been Bronwe’s. Thranduil had given them to Tauriel the day she made captain. 

But after Tauriel had been born, she remembered, her mother had never left the forest. She had been part of Queen Nindaras’s personal guard, rarely leaving Legolas’s mother’s side. The queen had been a second mother to Tauriel—it had been she who had first called Legolas and Tauriel gwenyn.

“Before you were born, your mother was often restless beneath Eryn Galen’s trees,” Thranduil said, his voice so soft, but there was a thread of pain there that Tauriel recognized. “She requested assignments as an emissary, a courier, anything that required travel. Our people called her Adasseron for the friendships she had with mortals.” Thranduil made a small sound that could have been a laugh. “Wanting to travel and protect the world beyond our borders is in your blood, Tauriel. It seems that all you needed was a catalyst.”

Tauriel swiped a hand across her eyes. There were so many emotions rushing through her, threatening to drag her into their current, that she could only ask, helplessly, “You are not angry?”

Thranduil’s hands moved like the sudden flash of a bird’s wings from cover of leaves. Tauriel thought for a moment that he was reaching out in an offering to take her own hands, but he picked up the star on his desk, her crooked, childhood star. His fingers ran over its uneven lines and chipped silver paint with great care. “Why should I be angry with you, Tauriel?”

“I abandoned my post.” She hadn’t meant to broach the subject, but the words tumbled from her all the same. “I abandoned your son in Laketown—”

“Yet you returned with him after. You chose to come back.” Thranduil placed the star back down next to Legolas’s elk and the sky in his eyes clouded, his mind traveling far though he still spoke to her. “That is all I ask of you now. You may leave my Halls, you may wander Middle Earth, but you must not be gone forever. You _must_ return.”

“Mirkwood is still my home,” she said after a long moment of struggling to regain her composure and keep her voice from trembling. “Part of my heart will always reside here.”

It was true—for all that she wanted to leave, Mirkwood was imprinted upon her heart, the wind through the trees in her lungs, the rush of the river in her blood. She was born and raised in this fierce, dangerous, beautiful place. Here, she had lived and loved and lost.

Thranduil took a breath that sounded sharp on the inhale, catching on some jagged edge. “All your life, I have had your loyalty,” he said, and though his voice was steady, he did not look at her. He closed his eyes and his head dipped down, silver hair brushing against his face. He seemed vulnerable suddenly in a way that pierced Tauriel to the core. “Tell me, henig, have I not also had your love?”

She could not keep from weeping then. “My lord Thranduil—hîr vuin. You and your son have always been family to me. You are the only father I have ever known.”

His hand still rested on his desk, his fingertips just shy of her star. Her heart raced in her chest as she dared to reach out and place her hand over his.

“It grieves me to leave you, but I cannot stay here.”

Thranduil turned his hand beneath hers and entwined their fingers in a tight, desperate grip. Through the thin veil of his hair, Tauriel watched Thranduil’s jaw clench and his throat move when he swallowed. She had never seen him shaken, not once in centuries, not even after his wife and her mother had sailed. What sorrow he had been stricken with, he had hidden from her. But she saw it now, the great well of it, as dark and deep as the Long Lake on a night without moon or stars.

“I cannot offer you words of comfort in the face of your loss. There are no words for it, I know.” Thranduil finally looked back at Tauriel and the smile he gave her was so bleak. “I loved your parents as I loved my Nindaras. Nothing on this side of the Sea can heal those wounds left in me.” He pressed his free hand to his chest, open palm over his heart before he clasped her hand between both of his. His eyes shone with tears not yet spilled over. “You must know that you have always been a daughter in my eyes. And that I am sorry for the love that you lost.” 

“Hîr vuin,” Tauriel sobbed, shattered. She had never expected this, never once dreamed he would say such things to her. “ _Ada._ ”

“I wish that Bronwe and Telvolas could see you, iel nîn.” Thranduil’s voice broke on the name of her father, an edhel she had never known, slain just before her birth. “They would be as proud as I am. You must know that.”

Such gifts these were, more precious than any gold or jewel. And Tauriel couldn’t find any words of gratitude that could convey the sheer depth of the love she felt, couldn’t speak through the storm of it.

“You have my blessing to leave my kingdom,” Thranduil told her, solemn and sure. “I pray that you find peace wherever you roam.”

-

But where would she roam? Where would her feet take her when she left behind the trees of Rhovanion? She did not know. Thranduil spoke to her of the Dúnedain in Arnor and Eriador, how their Rangers protected those lands and the people in them for the good of the world, without glory or even to some extent simple recognition.

And westward was all places Kíli had told her of—Dunland and the Greyflood River and that road he called the Greenway that lead to Bree. She smiled when she remembered his vehement assertion that it never stopped raining in that mannish town, not ever.

His former home had been westward, too. Ered Luin. So close to Mithlond and the Sea—she shied away from that thought. No, she would not travel so far, she did not want to risk her heart being taken by sea-longing. And she had promised her king that she would return.

Legolas required his own promise from her. And until the moment she stood before him and told him her plans, it hadn’t hit her that leaving her home behind meant leaving him too. Her brother, the sun-haired twin of her heart, her light-footed shadow—she had never been out of his company for long and now there could be no assurance as to when she would see him again.

She did not allow herself to consider that she might not, should ill befall either of them before they were reunited.

“Can you tell me why?” Legolas asked as he watched her gather up her belongings in her quarters and sort what to take and what to leave behind. His shoulders curved inward, his hands open and empty in his lap. “Why can’t you find peace here among our own people?”

That was not the question he wanted to ask her, she knew. He was searching for a fault in himself for her departure, though there was no logic in that line of thought. The head could not comfort the heart, not completely. She had tasted that guilt, same as he, when their mothers had sailed. _Why am I not enough for you to stay?_

She sat down next to him on the edge of her bed, close enough that their sides pressed together, shoulders to shoes. “I love you,” she said, the words easy as they always had been. There had never been a moment she had not known the truth of her feelings for him. And though he had heard it tens of thousands of times before, she understood the importance of hearing it aloud. “But this is something I must do for myself.”

She paused, and he curled his arm beneath hers to gently touch her wrist. The calluses on his fingertips were as familiar to her as her own. He said nothing, only waited for her to speak.

“I wish I could crack open my heart and show it to you,” she finally said. “I don’t know if I have the words to make you understand. I need—movement. I carry Kíli with me, my memories of him so clear, and that will never change, but I need to be in a different place now. There is no rest for me here.”

She pulled away from him only far enough that she had the space to reach out and cup his face between her palms. He closed his eyes, his face twisted into a frown. She remembered him small, another elfling wounded with bewildered grief, mourning loved ones they could not keep.

“One day perhaps someone will come into your life like a star blazing in the heavens,” she told him. “And you will understand me a little better then. But know this, gwador: I will not be gone forever.” She pressed her forehead against his. “I will come back to you, I swear it. I will move beyond the ice of the Battle, but I still must _move._ ”

Legolas took a breath that shuddered through his frame. Then he shifted, pulling her to him and holding her close, one hand along her shoulder blade, the other cradling the back of her head. She burrowed her face into his neck and allowed herself to cling to him for a long moment.

“I love you,” he said, and she was grateful for it. She needed to hear it too. “I love you,” he said, and she heard everything in his voice—honesty, sorrow, so much worry that it choked him. “I will not pretend that I understand, not about this. I know enough to recognize that it's different for you. But I do not want you to go! I did not think—”

She heard a sob catch in his throat and he didn’t finish his thought. She knew the tenor of it: _I did not think you’d really leave._ But he didn’t say it for the same reason she didn’t beg him to come with her and wander the world. 

“I don’t want to leave you,” she told him instead, shivering with him. “But I don’t know what will become of me if I stay.”

“I know,” Legolas said, ragged. “I wish I could come with you, but I cannot. I am needed here.”

 _I need you too,_ a part of Tauriel cried, but that was selfish and voicing it would be only bring them both more pain. He had followed her once against the wishes of his father, but he could not do so now. An indefinite leave of absence was not something that could be granted to Mirkwood’s prince.

“I will go with you as far as the eastern bank of the Anduin,” he promised her and she was grateful for it, grateful that he would be the last person she would have to leave behind.

-

It took time, however, preparing to leave home, more time than Tauriel expected. Once word traveled of her plans, she was flooded with parting gifts and last minute tasks until her final night in the Elvenking’s Halls arrived.

She did not have a moment to rest even then. There was a formal change of command ceremony and then a decidedly less formal celebration for her and her successor as captain, a fierce elleth named Miresgal. A veritable feast with all manner of food and drink and dance—and speeches, some that made Tauriel laugh, some that made her cry, some that made her want to dive under a table, and some that were a combination of all three, including her own, which she tried to keep brief.

She stole away when the revelry grew too much for her, making her way to a balcony where she could get some fresh air and yet still hear faint laughter and music from the Hall. It was an overcast evening, a few stubborn stars peeking through patches of clouds, small flashes of brightness in the growing dark.

Away from her people, Tauriel let herself think of Kíli.

When she closed her eyes, she could imagine him beside her, his forearms resting on the railing, his hand inches from hers. In her mind’s eye, he was looking up at the sky, standing up on his tiptoes to better see the blue fire of Helluin. And then he turned and gifted her with that sunlit smile and offered her his hand… She slid her palm along the cool stone to where he would be, but wishes would not create a memory she could touch.

If she was not careful, she would lose herself to the dream of him. She would fall into the hollow aching part of her that would never heal. She did not want that—and surely he would not want that for her either—but she could not stop herself from walking along the edge of the chasm, a hairsbreadth from slipping and tumbling down into its depths.

What names did Kíli have for the stars? What different names had his people given the constellations she knew by heart?

She would have taught him her language if he’d asked, taught him the names of the stars and the trees and all the words she knew for love. “Amrâlimê,” she whispered, shivering at the phantom feel of his hand over hers. She kept his runestone in a pocket inside her tunic so that it rested against her heart, and she took it out now and held it tight, his face burned into the backs of her eyelids. If she could go back, she would tell him yes. She knew what he meant.

But there was no going back. She opened her eyes and looked at the empty space beside her, the place he could have stood if he’d lived to love and laugh with her, sharing his light. She had to stop dreaming of the impossible. Step back from the edge. Let go of what could not be, but hold on to the hope of what could.

One day, she would see him again. She _would_ tell him yes. She would meet him at the gates to Aulë’s Halls in Valinor, but not yet. _I am sorry, meleth nîn,_ she thought, holding the words silent inside her chest. _I won’t come to you yet._ The stone was a promise to return and she would, she would, but not yet.

The sun would rise in the morning and she would leave this land to find new memories. She would not fade. She would live and gather a whole host of stories to lay out as gifts before Kíli’s feet.

A strange sort of peace swept over her at that thought. She saw years stretching out before her, but they were full of possibility instead of crushing grief, and a deep calming wave of rightness washed away all doubts.

Tauriel put the runestone back where it belonged, safe and warm against the steady beat of her heart. Then she followed the music back down into the Hall.

She owed Legolas a dance and one final futile attempt to drink her under the table.

-

It took a week for Legolas and Tauriel to travel out of the forest and reach the eastern banks of the Anduin. A week of the two of them journeying together and trying to make the time stretch as long as possible. A week of climbing trees and telling stories, hunting for food in the day and curling up together at night. Tauriel wanted to capture that time with her twin and suspend it in amber forever as a keepsake she could carry with her on her solitary road. 

Legolas had a way of banishing her sorrows as no one else ever could. A part of her would always feel as if she were still all of fifty with him, carefree and daring. They passed hours laughing and reminiscing about a shared childhood spent scaling the tallest trees, sneaking sweets from the kitchens, and swimming in the Forest River during the full moon.

As they followed that river westward, she could not resist knocking him into the water—which of course led to a good-natured scuffle in the ice-cold mud.

“Who is going to keep you out of trouble?” Legolas asked her afterward, his voice stuck somewhere between mirthful and mournful.

She reached over and wiped away a smear of dirt he’d missed cleaning off the left side of his face. “Don’t you mean who is going to get me _in_ to trouble?”

Legolas huffed a laugh, yanking on one of her braids. “Try not to perish from boredom out there without me. You did promise me you’d come back.”

He kept reminding her, as if he was afraid she’d forgotten—or that she would forget. She knew there weren’t words that would comfort him, nothing she could say that would quiet that persistent insecurity about being left behind. All she could do was hope she would be able to keep her word.

“Write to me when you can,” he told her, worry buried inside a sternness he’d inherited from his father. She made a joke about her handwriting being indecipherable and it brought back the mischievous spark in his eyes as he volleyed back, “I’m the only one on this good earth that can read your terrible penmanship, gwathel.”

Perhaps her leaving would be easier if they kept laughing about it up until the end. Easier, but not kept at bay.

She wept when they reached the edge of the forest at last, so close to the Anduin and so close to the leave-taking. Torn between her overwhelming desire to reach the new beginning she would find at that great river and the tiniest sliver of lingering doubt in herself. Maybe this was a terrible mistake, maybe she should run back home—but no, it was too late for that, she’d left everything already and when she pushed back the fear, she knew this was the path she was meant to take. A wanderlust sang in her blood now, calling her away.

All too soon and not soon enough, the silver flash of sunlight upon the Anduin River greeted the two of them. Tauriel and her twin stood together upon the rocks, listening to the rolling river’s song—and Tauriel thought, _surely my heart cannot take another parting, not this one._

But she knew there was no use putting it off any longer.

She faced Legolas and pressed her fist over her heart, but her fingers uncurled when she reached out to him. He returned the formal gesture before taking her outstretched hand and giving her a smile that broke her heart anew.

“May the grace of the Valar protect you on your road, Tauriel,” he said, tugging her to him and holding her one last time. “And remember to watch your own back since I won’t be there to do it for you.”

The laugh that burst from her was sharp, half a sob. “Heed your own advice, gwanunig!” She pushed him, smiling through the burn of tears. “Now be off with you. I will be all right.”

Legolas laughed too, rubbing his shining eyes, his feet light upon the earth as he stepped away. He did not say farewell, and neither did she. She could not bear to say something so final.

She watched him disappear into the forest then turned her back on her home. She let her feet take her where they would.

The world awaited her.

**Author's Note:**

> Language notes:
> 
> Sindarin:
> 
> \- _fëa_ – spirit/soul (plural is _fëar_ )  
> \- _gwanunig nîn_ – my twin (plural forms are _gwanûn,_ pair of twins, and _gwenyn,_ twins)  
>  \- _henig_ – child (diminutive)  
>  \- _goheno nin_ – forgive me  
>  \- _meleth nîn_ – my love  
>  \- _hîr nîn_ – my lord ( _hîr vuin_ is beloved lord)  
>  \- _Adasseron_ – lover of humans  
>  \- _Ada_ – father/dad  
>  \- _iel nîn_ – my daughter  
>  \- _edhel_ – gender neutral term for elf (female elf is _elleth,_ male elf is _ellon;_ Tauriel’s father is genderqueer/genderfluid)  
>  \- _gwador_ \- sworn-brother ( _gwathel_ is sworn-sister)
> 
> Khuzdul:
> 
> \- _amrâlimê_ – my love
> 
> Sources:  
> [Parf Edhellen](http://www.elfdict.com/)  
> [Merin Essi ar Quenteli (aka realelvish.net)](http://www.realelvish.net) which was an invaluable resource for phrases and [name lists](http://www.realelvish.net/namelists.php)  
> [Gwaith I-Phethdain](http://www.elvish.org/gwaith/movie.htm)  
> [The Dwarrow Scholar](https://dwarrowscholar.wordpress.com/)


End file.
